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Lesson 3

The document discusses principles for developing effective educational materials. It notes that materials should be attractive, make learners feel comfortable, help learners develop confidence, be relevant and useful to learners, encourage self-investment from learners, prepare learners for new language points, expose learners to authentic language use, draw learners' attention to linguistic features, provide opportunities for communication practice, and accommodate different learning styles and affective attitudes. Additional principles include using functional, contextualized language and engaging learners in purposeful language use through audiovisual components and written/spoken genres. Materials also need flexibility to cater to individual and contextual differences.

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Rhyan Perdon Smith
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62 views

Lesson 3

The document discusses principles for developing effective educational materials. It notes that materials should be attractive, make learners feel comfortable, help learners develop confidence, be relevant and useful to learners, encourage self-investment from learners, prepare learners for new language points, expose learners to authentic language use, draw learners' attention to linguistic features, provide opportunities for communication practice, and accommodate different learning styles and affective attitudes. Additional principles include using functional, contextualized language and engaging learners in purposeful language use through audiovisual components and written/spoken genres. Materials also need flexibility to cater to individual and contextual differences.

Uploaded by

Rhyan Perdon Smith
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Discuss the Principles in Materials Development

Tomlinson (Richards, 2001) suggests some basic principles in conducting materials development for the teaching of
language:
1. “Materials should achieve impact.” which means they should have attractive presentation and appealing content
to target learners.
2. “Materials should help learners to feel at ease.” which means texts & illustration in materials should make
learners feel comfortable, relaxed and being supportive.
3. “Materials should help learners to develop confidence.” which means they should make learners feel successful
and push learners to develop their skills.
4. “What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful.” which means materials should
convince learners that teaching points are useful whereby teachers need to find what the learners are interested in.
5. “Materials should require & facilitate learner’s self-investment.” which means they should encourage learners to
invest their interests, efforts and attentions.
6. “Learners must be ready to acquire the points being taught.” which means using materials to prepare learners to
focus on features of target language which they haven’t learnt yet, so they might be attentive to learn these features.
7. “Materials should expose learners to language in authentic use.” which means they should provide learners with
advice and instructions for their activities, spoken language and written text.
8. “The learners’ attention should be drawn to linguistic features of the input.” which means materials should include
grammar and how the language is actually used.
9. “Materials should provide learners with opportunities to use target language to achieve communication process.”
10. “Materials should take in account that learners differ in learning style.” which means they should provide a variety
of activities and should support all learning styles, such as, visual learners, auditory learners, kinesthetic learners,
experiential learners, analytic learners, global learners, dependent learners and independent learners.
11. “Materials should take in account that learners differ in affective attitudes.” which means they should provide
different types of text and activities, as well as should be aware of cultural sensitivities of target learners.
12. “Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction.” which means they should not force
learners to speak until they are ready.
13. “Materials should maximize learning potential by encouraging intellectual, aesthetic & emotional involvement
which stimulates both right and left brain activities.”
14. “Materials should not reply too much on controlled practice.” which means they should focus on language use.
15. “Materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback, especially feedback on the effectiveness of use of
language rather than accuracy of language.”

In addition, Crawford (Richards-Renandya, 2002) states that materials obviously reflect the writer’s views of language
&learning and teachers (and students) will respond according to how well these match their own beliefs and
expectations. Some points to be considered in providing effective materials:

• Language - is functional and must be contextualized; should be realistic and authentic; requires learner
engagement in purposeful use of language.
• Classroom materials will usually seek to include an audio visual component.

• SL learners need to develop the ability to deal with written/spoken genres.


• Materials need to be flexible enough to cater to individual and contextual differences.
Enumerate the basis for choosing appropriate educational materials
1. Appropriateness
2. Authenticity
3. Interest
4. Organization and Balance
5. Cost
1. The appropriateness of materials must be judged from the students’ perspective rather than the teachers’
perspective.
2. Authentic materials provide resources for ELT teachers and offer them the opportunity to expose learners to
materials produced for real life and out of classroom contexts. The focus is on the message and means and context
are often used to help to communicate it. If teachers use authentic texts sensibly, they provide learners with
alternatives to learn real English usage.
3. In choosing educational materials, the teacher should ask the students about themselves-- who they are, what
they are about, what they are interested in, and who they want to become. Not just for the purpose of building
personal relationships, but to improve instructional connections to the students. The stronger the information or skill
connects to the daily life of the student, the stronger the probability of it moving from working to long-term memory.
4. The point of seeking balance among learning styles when designing instruction is to avoid heavily favoring any
category of a learning style dimension. In balanced instruction, students are taught sometimes in ways that match
their preferences and sometimes in ways that don’t. When that approach is taken, the students are not too
uncomfortable to learn, as some would be if they were never taught in the ways they prefer. At the same time, they’re
all sometimes taught against their preferences, which helps them build important skills they might never develop if
they were only taught as they prefer.
Cost of educational materials should also be considered. It will be achievement for a teacher, if he can bring a
situation where he uses low cost- no cost teaching material and his student comes forward with a new idea to create
of his own for the next one.

Demonstrate an appreciation of availability of language materials in meaningful learning.


• Teaching for appreciation requires ensuring that what is taught is worth learning, explaining the value of this
content and modeling its applications, and scaffolding learning by engaging students in activities that allow them to
experience its valued affordances.
• Students’ perspectives and ideas related to classroom learning seem to be mostly ignored in schools. Not only
does this issue result in both teachers and students struggling in the process of teaching and learning, but students
also fail to appreciate the intrinsic value of the curriculum content. It is therefore important to explore the significance
of student engagement on their appreciation of learning as well as any positive effects that it might have on their
success.

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